I'm in a Book! I'm Famous?

This is just great.

I Googled Wesley King + Raleigh + lost wallet and I find out things about me that I never knew. 

I should have drowned John that day we splashed together. I should have given him the ol' Baptist treatment... but held him under for just a few seconds too long. It would have been so easy, and I would have gotten a nice pair of water moccasins out of the deal.

But alas, his splashes distracted me from the fact that Vanita was a useless excuse for a human - even worse than he was. Why does it always have to come back to snakes with me? And is Vanita a poorly veiled caricature of Vanity?

Blessing in The Skies

Friends,

I will always cherish the days of recent and hope for better to come. For that, I thank the likes of North America, that country of no small wonder which has given me some of the best it has to offer. From Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, New York, North Carolina, California, and Illinoise! (even one from Ohio.) Oh, and CHINA!

You have sat with me through free clinics about ankle health and wealth clinics about the mental self. You've humored me as a large man wearing NOTHING but overalls broke the news that the party I found on Craigslist was, as we suspected, strictly for gay people. You have guided me through the 72 oz. mini-waterfall needed to stay hydrated on "binge day." You have helped me write rap and love songs about global warming and speeding trains. 

You have touched me on the shoulder and asked questions you knew I wouldn't answer, because I always have to be the question-asker. You have seen me hot, you have seen me sweaty. You have seen me grab collars and defend bow ties. You have seen me with your dog and you have seen me onstage laughing with a gay ghost. We have watched a #TigerBleed #TigerBlood on the sidelines of a soccer match, and never once considered this inappropriate.

You have passed me the basketball and asked me to pass the ketchup. You have watched me embarrass myself and watched me watching you, which is embarrassing. I have slept on your couch and your coupon futon and if you're a good friend I've probably shared a hotel bed or tent with you. We've danced (no exceptions) and shared family dinner. You found out I was homeschooled and still let me meet your parents (except you, Zhang it!),

You've walked with me on the streets of Chapel Hill; you've watched me talk the breath out of a taxi driver; you've paid for my dinner a time or two. You let me give you a nickname and bad relationship advice. You've seen me smile with my eyes closed. You showed me your Golden Gate city, you've laughed with one hand in the air and the other on the handlebar of a hastily-rented tandem bike.

Me + my three best friends of all time.

You've talked me down to my face and talked me up behind my back. You are as a whole more than I deserve, but individually I see how I could have done better. Joking, haha. You are a Carbamaraptor taking shots at a Pink Thang in the lime-green leafery of SoCal. I have fixed your computer with one hand and broken the license plate off your Audi with the other. We graduated together, we were new hires together. We have lived in sin in a 21st century brothel, meanwhile, we've watched the universe expand. 

No matter who you are, I've been worried about you. You can always do better, be cuter, get richer or die faster, in my opinion. I want these things for you, but I'd almost rather we put that on pause and press play on Dexter or Californication. I miss you if you're gone; I welcome you if you're just getting here.

Boom. You're Done.

Faced with the chilly temperament of the big city after a heated workweek, I spent my Friday night playing volleyball with a group of 80’s ladies and embattled weakened warriors. I joined the Recreational Sand Volleyball league on Meetup.com, and they invited me out for a Friday sandstorm. After impressing 100% of the people there with my skills in the first few minutes, I spent the next two hours demonstrating to them that their faith in me was misplaced. My court flailing and failing dusted their eyes with sandy irritants, and my clumsiness left one lady with a bruised everything after I pinned her and her boyfriend under me in a midcourt display of stinky instincts.

I was able to repurchase some rapport, if not some credibility, when I opined that “the net just pinched my nipples.” Someone asked if I meant that my chest had hit the tape; if my nipples had brushed against the net. I replied with “Whatever you want to call it. Brushed, pinched, tweaked… The net just action-verbed my nipples.” By personifying the net and making it out to be a spindly beast with careless hands and a deviant sex drive, I was able to take the focus of my inadequacies. I like to think that my court name is IED (Improvised Explosive Device), but I know a few people would be delighted to swap “device” with “douche bag.”

Like a sandy little frog, or camel toad, I hopped to Wisconsin’s apartment to shower before heading to downtown Raleigh to meet Zhang it! and Joe (the Taxidermist). Zhang it!, who had sworn off Carbamas the weekend before, was doing a Carbama when I walked in. Joe had taken a cab to Raleigh (30 miles and $85) and was put in handcuffs twice in two different taxis. Joe’s pitbull was drinking vodka, water, and lemon slices.

We got dropped off and made a pretty straight line toward a bar called the Ugly Monkey. At the door, they tried to charge us $1 to become members, but I said I didn’t have any money, and Zhang it! told the bouncer that I was a member and that he was my guest for the evening. So we ended up inside, and I ended up with a membership and a sharpie I stole from the bouncer. I would call him incompetent, but it was the same guy that wouldn’t let me in with my work badge back when I forgot my license. Once inside, I began to mark Zhang it! up and down with marker, telling him that the cap was on. I marked every poison ivy spot that I could find, which added up to a lot, which resulted in a Zhang it! with a zillion tiny black X’s. We began to spread the rumor that he had Sherpes, a sharper, more permanent, STD.

Sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the night, listening to Zhang it! talk to someone irrelevant on the phone, I suddenly found myself in the middle of a near shoot out. Joe had managed to press roughly on a passing taxi driver’s buttons, apparently by jostling his crotch in the taxi’s direction. The driver started screaming at Joe, Joe was saying something New Yorkish (actually, it was “Boom, you’re done” over and over), and Zhang it! was giggling like a Hello Kitten stuck in a blending machine.

On the walk back, we came across a group of empty husks rustling with their tops off. About eight guys were gathered, gesticulating and threatening to hand out beatings to each other. I snatched a nice shirt off the ground, and we kept walking.

When we got back to Joe’s simple complex, Joe grabbed a mini-gargoyle from in front of a neighbor’s place and put it down next to a door a bit further down the hallway. Zhang it! was trailing a bit behind, probably still kicking it like a cicada into his cell, when he noticed Joe setting down the ‘goyle. I can only assume Zhang it! thought it was Styrofoam, because at that instant he sprinted unabashedly toward the squatting gremlin, and booted it as hard as he could. It moved about two inches, and Zhang it! went sprawling and howling first into a wall, then to the dusty expanse of unkempt flooring. Then, like a outcropped cherry hiding in a forgotten drawer, he rolled into a ball and waited for a night light or a dark spark. I typed out the following text and forwarded it to ten people: “Zhang just kicked a gargoyle.” I woke up trapped under a flood of concerned responses. Zhang woke up to Joe’s pitbull peeing on his bloody sock.

Last week Chris Lethal, my housemate, asked if he could use my red lunchbox. I said “sure” in the kind of way that most people say “no.” After an awkward moment, he told me that the lunchbox was his. It was suddenly clear to me why he had taken it from my room several times and set it on the kitchen counter. I had thought, “Hmm, curious,” and chalked it up to excessively polite behavior. As it turns out, he was taking it back for himself, but I was packing it and stealing it before he could get to it in the mornings. When my Grandma was alive she used to tell me that the early bird gets the worm, which was an excuse for us to go to BINGO before dinner and stay until after my bedtime. Back then, I had ink all over my hands from marking her B-19’s, and now I have ink stains from a night out spreading Sherpes. Early birds may get the multi-hearted dirt snakes, but the lovable, clueless sasshole gets the zippered red lunchbox.

Painting the Town Red

I was getting ready to be a threat; I was getting ready to consider my next plan of attack. While visiting Clemson, SC for my sister’s volleyball tournament, I took a break from life, allowing my dad to decision make like a cattle prod. The man creates his own reality, pushing into the fabric of space/time and slipping through the rips into a dimension where he is King and all that matters is family matters. He got us into a private club where he embarrassed me at pool and darts in front of the members. We slept in a van in a field full of cars in a town full of unencumbered disillusionists. I felt… feelings. You know.

Speaking of feelings, I speak of them to no one. But you may have noticed a few weeks of slippage in my blogging life, and this was due in no small part to my inability to write when I have something on my mind that I cannot/will not talk about. It just so happens that the date of my birthday closely coincides with the date of my first truly exceptional and acceptable relationship. That is all I will type on the subject.

My dad drove the two of us back to Chapel Hill from Clemson, and the partay started. As we were watching college football and sipping starter drinks, my dad looked around and noticed a severe shortage of birthday treats. Before he left for the store, he asked if anybody needed anything; Zhang it! ordered Everything bagels. An hour later, my dad walked through the door with a gallon of ice cream, a four-part cake, and about 10 bags of bagels. Either Zhang it! was speaking Engrish or my dad had never heard of everything bagels. I’m going to bet on the latter; he couldn’t decide what an Everything bagel was, so he bought everything.

Needless to say, in less than half an hour, we were required to inhale three shots of tequila, one FULL bowl of ice cream, and a hefty slice of cake. We stumbled down the street trying not to paint the bushes with vanilla ice cream and medium rare cake.

I spent the walk downtown convincing Man U. that it was OK for him to drink in front of an elder. As soon as he had stepped in the door, he pulled me into a corner and said that I should have told him my dad was going to be there. I asked if that would have changed his coming, he said no, but that he would have gone through a mental preparation session. He ended up sleeping on our kitchen table.

At Top of the Hill, I spent the first half hour yelling my computer password into the phone at my dad. “THAT’S D like DHARMA INITIATIVE!” I disappeared with Chris Lethal to a different bar, where he was going to try to find some Chapel Hill people to introduce me to. When Laura called (Candlewick’s Laura) and asked me where I was, she says I said “iiiii am not the person to be asking… if you want accurate informationnnnnnn.” I snuck out of the bar in an attempt to be the first one to get back to my house, but after hopping three fences, I was actually the last to return. I helped guide a couple of people through a shortcut to my neighborhood, and as I was verbally narrating my voyage, rolled down a hill, and painted the bushes red with embarrassment and pain.

The next morning we played football and Zhang it! painted the bushes yellow with bananas and water (note a severe lack of bagel remains.)

My dad had to leave and I started making my own decisions again. Not as exciting as it sounds…

I am writing a book (or, the book is writing me). I am going to a concert in Chapel Hill tomorrow for my favorite musician:

Andrew Bird

I am interested in life and it is mildy attracted to me. We’ll see what happens.

A little love for my current city

Next time: Zhang it! breaks his foot kicking a gargoyle. And a new friend, Joe, earns the nickname The Taxidermist.

...I was on my bike

A little illumination on alumni’s: they are intensely serious about how important it is that you recognize the superiority you share with them over all others, acknowledge that superiority publicly, and wholeheartedly accept that this alone is the only prerequisite for friendship in the adult business world. Last week, I made the mistake of walking into a restaurant with my Ross School of Business shirt on. Before I had even found my seat, an excited “agent” vaulted from his booth and shook one of my hands with both of his. “I went there ten years ago,” is how the conversation started, and “If you ever need anything, anything…” is how it ended. The man was so cleancut and obviously in charge of his faculty(ies) that I was almost tempted to say “No” when if he asked if I had a State Farm insurance agent. The truth is that, yes, I do have an agent, and I can’t believe I almost cheated on Doug Heins, CLU CEF CFA CAT (and many other three letter C-words.)

Jake and Kent left in what amounted to be the perfect storm. After stirring up controversy by convincing one of the other New Hire’s managers that they were interns (while playing volleyball), they rode a torpedo of my shame out of town. The only proof of their presence: two empty glasses in the sink and a snack pit that Jake left… I had to eat my way out.

The weekend snuck up like a charred turtle from a black canyon, totally not taking me by surprise. My friend Rachel got a job in Raleigh, and this so shocked me into a smile that I forgot to allude to it with an alliteration. Or did I?

On Friday night, Zhang it! and I went over to bid adieu to Luke, one of the One-years that has officially reset his job clock to zero by moving back to Wisconsin. Throw in one more since then, Andy, and that makes three gone in the last month. Zhang it! got attacked by a praying mantis, I made fast friends with another small dog. Before we headed home, we both grabbed some delicious baked goods that Luke was given by a baker that crashed into his car. Apparent reparations for damage and the tastiest from of blackmail.

Saturday, my soon-to-be housemate Chris Lethal invited me to test out my new mountain bike with him. This did not mean that I was to drag my bike up to his bed and wait for him to fetch the chain lube from the garage. The actual activities to be attempted were much more Rated X. Xtreme mountain biking, I found out, involves very tight helmets that may or may not allow you to draw breath, depending on the scale of crime you are about to commit, and serious altitude adjustments. For several hours, I watered the earth with the first derivative of my respiratory system, using my body’s largest organ as a fire hose. Chris and I talked the entire time, covering topics from the aspirations of our best friends to the apparent disconnect between the privatization of health care and the ideals of the voting (non-voting) minority (minorities). By this, I mean we shared back stories and tried, as most do, to place ourselves within that idealized version of our pasts. It always sounds much better when you are allowed to be the editor of not only your history but those of everyone who has ever been in your life.

After a late afternoon of Halo with Karrrl, Ben, and S.S. Kimu, I got ready to host some guests. Luke and Andy came up with a few of their friends to explore Chapel Hill. While everyone else ordered and consequently consumed late-night burritos, I sat in the booth and judged, quite heavily. I was not hungry, but I was tired from the bike ride, so I was not completely aware of my saying out loud “What is that girl wearing? Are those polyester pants? Uggggggly…” I was embarrassed naught, but it was the second time that night that my wide-mouth ass had spoken itself into a corner.

Michigan Mike (hence forth referred to as 6-pack), Zhang it!, And-I were seeking sustenance. While at a stop light, waiting for the Go light, I realized we were in an area of Chapel Hill where I had recently witnessed a very gross approximation of a misdemeanor. “I saw an old lady take relief by that tree yesterday,” I said with conviction, pointing left to the spot where said event took place. Zhang it!, ever the antagonist, noticed that not only had a car of girls just pulled up next to us, but they had heard what I said, or at least he assumed they had, and screamed “Wes, I can’t believe you just said that in front of those girls!”

The driver of the car turned on me – who was fidgeting in the passenger seat of Andy’s vehicle - like a hinge turns on a doorjamb, trapping me in the aforementioned corner. “What did you say?” The question was posed in such a way as to reveal her incredulousness, my disgracefulness, and our momentary sharing of a space in which an offal crime had recently taken place. This is me talking: “I said, ‘I saw a lady take a shit by that tree yesterday’.” As her jaw dropped, revealing nothing but the shadows of words I would never hear, I added, as if it would make a difference, “I was on my bike.”

Over dinner, we discussed the improbability that I will ever assimilate into the human race, and I promised that the night would turn out wonderfully. No one took my word for it. Not even me.

I convinced Wisconsin to come back to Michigan with me. While that statement may sound impossible, remember that a state is only a governmentally derived concept, and it isn’t impossible for one concept to insert itself inside another (see conception). We will be flying into Detroit on Wednesday, September 2^nd, and will be driving back with 6-pack on Labor Day. My lack of transportation and the fact that it is Welcome Week means I will probably be in Ann Arbor for that weekend. Might make it over to East Lansing. Speaking of MSU, I have convinced a family member who will be attending this fall to write a guest blogpost about the closing weeks of summer, and how the impending doom known as higher education surely taints the sunset of a season. It will be Wisconsin’s first time in Ann Arbor, so I am hoping to show him all of the nice parts, and none of what lies hidden in every city – proof of entropy: of both the universe and the human verse.

I will put off talking about the egging for one more post. Next time I will also cover Man U. and his stance on shiny cars and how this relates to my wanting badly to pay child support. I will leave you with a few awkward moments from the phone calls I have been taking.

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Myself: let me know if you have any more issues relating to this

Client: will do. thanks much for the really quick action!

Myself: umm …?

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I finished helping a lady connect to the corporate network from home. Right before she hung up, I blurted, “Good luck with all your connection today. See ya… I mean… talk to you soon?” Click.

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Client: “What keys do I put my fingers on to type?”